This gets me to where it starts to set up ramdisks, and then it just hangs.

I'd appreciate any help people can offer, since I've been reading forum posts here for days, trying pretty much everything suggested by people and not having any luck. Don't really care if it's for 4.1.1 or 5.0, just let me know which it's for if you suggest something.

At least some progress on the hard disk image file. That now boots, but doesn't necessarily want to run. But it might be because I'm running it in VirtualPC and not on an actual Dell system. I'll have to try that a little later.

The ISO version still doesn't seem to want to boot even with the version of memdisk from the post you quoted linked to (and I had tried before).

In any case, I'm at least getting further along than before, so it's a start. Thanks for the help icecube.

Edit: After running the image on a "live" system and not a VM, it loads and seems to run just fine. So it looks like the raw bit was the key. Thanks again icecube, and hopefully this will help someone else.

btw, the most recent version of Dell Diags that I have found were from the file listing for the XPS M1530

Dell has several diagnostic packages each targeting different machines. I have a set of three that I currently use that cover most/all of the dell machines I have worked on.

I personally like to use the CW##### naming scheme (dell uses this) and then adding in the texthelp the list of models that version supports. That way you know what you have and easily know which one supports what.

I have also had success to creating the hdd image file using the dell diag installer tool and running it with syslinux/UBCD (prior to the ISO booting capability being adding in syslinux.